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“To be honest with you, it was partly borne out of the excitement of doing something different and pushing West London,” says Simon Hill, co-founder and managing director of idea management startup Wazoku, of his company’s decision to locate on the other side of town from most of the well publicized action, but he continues, “it was massively borne out of the fact that it’s a lot cheaper over this side of London still. Shoreditch [in the east] has become very, very expensive.”

Hill’s solution to rising real estate prices would be familiar to generations of big city dreamers with limited resources – move further out to the neighborhood no one else wants… yet. Hill’s co-founder James King also runs the incubator Find Invest Grow (aka FIG), so Hill took his company to their newly minted office space across town.

“Around September last year a piece of land became available behind Westfield [shopping center in West London]. There was a bunch of warehouses back here, and so we took over the whole warehouse and turned it into our own West London incubator that houses a whole host of different businesses. Having our own four walls was good,” he explains.

The Advantages Of Heading West

This location in FIG Village has other advantages besides a simple set of walls. “A lot of the companies we work with are actually out West. If you look at where Cisco, where MicrosoftMicrosoft, where the big B2B tech is, it’s actually out this side of town, as is Discovery Channel, Sky and the BBC,” Hill says.

Wazoku, which provides an internal idea generation and management platform for the BBC has clearly benefited from this proximity. But has being away from the East London tech action created other hassles for the fledgling company? Quite the opposite, claims Hill.

“A lot of clients, they’re struggling for meeting space in Central London. They’re really happy to come to us. We’ve got a huge space. We’ve got a Muay Thai boxing gym in here, so we have two boxing rings in the office – people find it quite quirky. If we’re going to meet clients, then the fact that we can show them an interesting space that isn’t just four desks in a really expensive Shoreditch office gives us some more credibility,” Hill says.

And The Downsides

If Hill and other West London startups have the classic advantages of the gentrification pioneer – big, character filled spaces in which to create – he also faces some of the same challenges. The biggest one? Imminent interest in the transforming neighborhood that will shift the real estate market once again.

FIG’s warehouse home is slated for demolition in the next few years to make way for an expansion of the shopping center that also serves as its landlord, so the incubator is already making plans for a move. “We’re already looking for where might the next big warehouse project is that we can take over and bring in even more exciting businesses,” Hill says.

That might be a hassle for the companies in FIG Village, but it’s good news for the city, Hill feels. “I certainly think West London is changing. The Chelsea/Kensington area is trying to make a push for having some level of tech presence as well, as is Notting Hill,” he reports. “It’s a testament to how much is going on in London writ large that people are not just concentrated in a one-mile square area.”

So will the growing prominence of West London startups create a new hub to rival Silicon Roundabout in the east? That’s not exactly how Hill sees it.

“They’re actually branching out and turning London into a tech city itself,” he concludes.

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The potential for `Silicon Mall` in West London is great news, but readers should be aware that West London already has a thriving media and broadcast innovation and startup hub in Television Triangle. Centred on the Discovery Channel, Sky, BBC,Talk Talk and Virgin, new firms such as Perform, IMG Digital and Showcaster and various business incubators bit.ly/Tiky2c